Many products rely upon impacting mass for abrasion, for coating, cutting, and a wide range of other applications. Pressurized sandblasting, exploding chemical for bullets, and rotating cutting blades are techniques used to accelerate a mass. Our U.S. Pat. No. 8,820,303B2 (referred to as ‘303’), defines gyration techniques to generals the velocity of a mass for many purposes. A patent application using rotationally induced acceleration has been filed by one of these two inventors. This hybrid configuration is the logical outgrowth of those activities. Two principle goals are driving this invention, simplistic designs and compact packaging.
The number of moving parts in any design defined by ‘303’ is typical for complex machinery. These gyrating designs are defined by: the compactness of the product large number of variables to select from in optimizing for a specific application, and the scalable nature of the design. Variations in gyration-based design parameters, such as number of stages, shapes of stages, radii of gyrations and frequencies of gyrations of various stages, allow for trades to satisfy many applications with a number of options.
Gyration induced acceleration, in ‘303’, has re-phasing as an integral strategy. These re-phasing events generate velocities in excess of the classic phase-lock velocity. Conventional phase-lock velocity, rotating or gyrating, is defined as the path length times the frequency. The Delay Loop concept in the ‘303’ is the technique for re-phasing within a stage; a structure gyrating at a particular frequency with a particular gyration radius. Delay Loop structures are continuations of phasing structures in any single gyrating frequency, ‘mechanical detours’. Moving into a new gyrating structure using ‘303’ Service Loop concepts, builds upon the Delay Loop for gaining velocity. Service Loops are true discontinuities in the pathway, allowing major changes in the accelerating structures; shapes, frequency, dimensions, etc.
In the gyrating patent, ‘303’, there am numerous examples wherein the mass, an object being accelerated, is ‘detoured’ by a Delay Loop (term used in ‘303’). While in the Delay Loop the mass is not subjected to any significant forces capable of reducing the velocity of the mass. Upon exiting a Delay Loop, the mass is reinserted into a section of the gyrating structure, taking advantage of a new phase relationship between the mass and the accelerating force. An example of re-phasing occurs when a Delay Loop pathway is inserted in a compound shape, a bowl leading into a cylinder with its diameter equal to the bowl's diameter. As the mass may have achieved phase-lock velocity at the bowl's rim, any additional cycles within the cylinder would not yield any additional velocity gains unless the mass can be rephased with respect, to the accelerating force. The Delay Loop is specifically designed to move the mass out of the acceleration plane and allow the mass to reenter the acceleration plane at a phasing favorable to increasing the mass' velocity. In gyration motion the radial force is periodic, thus new phasing can occur at any point, in a particular cycle, and this opportunity repeats itself every cycle. As noted in ‘303’ the limit of velocity gain occurs when the mass's velocity is sufficiently faster than the phase wave velocity and thus the duration of time available to gain additional velocity is too smalt to overcome the losses imparted to the mass by moving out of, and then back into, the accelerating plane of the phase wave.
When a mass has effectively reached a practical upper limit to its velocity in a particular gyrating, structure at a particular gyrating frequency, ‘303’ takes the mass into a new structure with different parameters: gyration frequency, gyration radius, dimensions, etc. Transitioning from one structure to another is another integral part of the ‘303’ patent.
The patent, ‘303’, defines a series of transitions wherein the shape, frequency, radii of gyration are selectively different on the opposing sides of the transition. There are numerous mechanisms defined in the patent to appropriately allow for these variations. In the patent, ‘303’, these transitions are defined as ‘Service Loops’, terminology to distinguish between these transition ‘Service Loop’ structures and Delay Loop structures.
Delay Loops and Service Loops allowed for a vast array of configurations, as noted in the ‘303’ patent. The necessary conditions for a stable acceleration within a gyrating system lead the inventors to use shapes with variable localized radii (bowls). However, other shapes can be used provided the initial conditions are satisfied; for example, the initial insertion velocity for a fixed radius (cylinder shape).
While synchronous stages could be designed and controlled, the additional complexities are not required in the designs of the ‘303’ patent. A synchronous design can fail when asynchronous performance occurs. Building components with tolerances to permit synchronous motions of the various stages is possible and may be desirable for some applications. Asynchronous designs are more robust because they assume the components from stage-to-stage can have any phase relationship rather than highly controlled phasing (synchronous).
Conversely, the rotating design in patent application titled “Acceleration and Precision Controlled Ejection of Mass” is less complex from a parts count, but the compromise is the larger dimensions required to achieve the same exit velocity of the accelerated mass, compared to a gyrating system. The only parameters in the rotating design are frequency and length of the rotating hollow tube.
In the rotating design, accelerating the mass a second or third time is not very practical. The insertion into the second, or subsequent, structure (or stage) is going to require controls, defeating the lower parts count advantage. The 2nd or 3rd structure could have been used as the first structure, since the frequency is the only credible parameter.
Gyration designs favor higher frequency and as such compactness, whereas the rotational designs use lower frequencies compatible with larger dimensions. Components capable of supporting higher frequency operations are more plentiful at smaller dimensions. As a practical matter the gyration systems are physically smaller, roughly 2× smaller on at feast 2 of the 3 dimensions, than the spinning-only systems of comparable mass exit velocity.
Gyration-only produces one family of products, spinning-only produces a second family of products, and the coupled spin-gyrate generates a third family of products.